Bahamas Backs Off (a Little) After Pushback on Fees

Average Cruising Craft To Get a $500 Break

Bahamas tourism industry pushes back.

Bahamian legislators have amended proposed cruising fee increases to go easier on the average visiting sailboat and trawler. Instead of $1,650, a cruiser who fishes and anchors would pay $1,150.

Lawmakers have done this by adjusting the catagories. Previously there were three catagories: up to 34 feet, 35 to 100 feet and over 100 feet. Now the catagories are up to 50 feet, over 50 to 100 feet and over 100 feet.

So instead of paying $1,000 for entry on your average 44-foot sailboat, the cruising permit will cost $500. The proposed anchoring fee remains at $200 or $350, depending on whether up to or over 34 feet. The proposed fishing permit also remains at $200 or $350 depending of whether up to or over 34 feet. The fishing permit is valid for two entries within 30 days.

The anchoring fees for vessels over 100 feet is $1,500.

Facebook has been ablaze with indignation ever since the foreign cruising community learned about the bill. The center-console crowd was also angered, but they too got some relief in the latest version.

The frequent digital cruising card (FDCC), which caters to the long-weekend visitors boating over from South Florida, now costs $1,500 for vessels up to 50 feet and is good for two years of unlimited travel. Boats over 50 and up to 100 feet will cost $2,500 and those over 100 will cost $8,000.

Echoing the Bahamas Prime Minister’s own anti-American boater rhetoric, much of the Bahamian response on social media was a collective “good ridance, you cheapskates,” accusing foreigners of taking their fish, polluting their waters with sewage and messing up the seabed with our anchors.

But those sentiments were not shared by people in the marine industry such as Stephen Kappeler of the Bimini Big Game Club Resort and Marina, who told a reporter from the Tribune newspaper of Nassau that he had fielded 12 cancelations that day and expected the trend to continue. Kappeler said:

Remember, when we cancel a booking, this is money that somebody's already paid, a deposit they've already paid. When you book a room and you book a slip with us, that's somewhere in the area of $500 in business just the first night deposit. And guests are coming in for two, three, four nights.

So you could multiply and extend that out to understand what the value of a cancellation is. And they're looking for the refund of their money. I can tell you, there were a dozen alone today. We're a 50-room resort. So if this continues at a pace of a dozen a day... I'm sure not everybody's got the news or got the message. So this thing is going to be exponential.

That was yesterday. The Tribune tends to be less friendly to the ruling party than the Bahamas other major newspaper, and today it published another story on the issue that began with this:

The Bahamian tourism industry and its three main promotion boards have untied to urge the Prime Minister to “pause” new and increased boating fees that “could not have come at a worse time.”

In their joint letter to the PM, The Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association, the Bahamas Out Islands Promotions Board, the Nassau/Paradise Island Promotions Board and the Grand Bahama Island Promotion Board described a “high spending, buoyant, seafaring visitor market. who contribute significantly to a vast number of tourism business owners…throughout the archipelago.”

The promotion boards cited reports of numerous marina cancellations. They noted that the nation’s tourism industry was facing uncertain times and that while the cruise-ship sector appeared to have a solid footing, the rest of the industry “faces far less predictable, precarious headwinds.”

There has been no pause—at least not yet—but Attorney General Ryan Pinder spoke to the Bahamas Senate Tuesday, arguing that the new version of the bill strikes “an appropriate balance” that raises fees but also extends the duration of a cruising permit from three months to a year.